Left My Heart

This side quest takes place at a Legion-controlled location known as Cottonwood Cove. Cottonwood Cove is located at the far southeastern edge of the map, and will require quite an overland voyage to get there. The good news is that if you have some areas nearby already added to your map, you can quick-travel with relative ease, and then take a short walk to Cottonwood Cove. Camp Searchlight is probably the nearest location, due west, from Cottonwood Cove, though there are plenty of other locations in Cottonwood Cove's vicinity, so that you'll have a lot of spots to choose from. When you arrive at Cottonwood Cove, how you're greeted will depend entirely on your relationship with the Legion. If you have a good relationship with them, or even a moderate one, you'll be able to walk in with no problems, but expect a more tepid and outright violent response from the Legion if you don't have a good relationship with them. After all, this is one of their bases of operation.

This side quest can be a lot longer if you go about it in another fashion, but we did things in a pretty straight-forward way so that confusion should be kept to a minimum. It's important to note that you must have a bad relationship with the Legion for this particular permutation of the side quest to work out (and if you have a good relationship with them, expect it to sour if you take this route). Behind the main building of Cottonwood Cove is a fence with a locked gate. You'll need a good lockpick score to open the gate, but once you do, you'll have access to a few prisoners that are being held as to-be slaves by the Legion. Keep in mind that if you haven't already slain everyone around you, they will attack you once you pick open the gate, so it's probably a good idea to be prepared for that contingency.

Now, there are multiple ways to finish this side quest. If you have a good relationship with the Legion and don't want to ruin it, you shouldn't pick the gate open at all, but should instead let your Bottle Caps do the talking. But we killed everyone in the compound and gained access to the gated area. Upon speaking to any of the captives, you'll learn that you need a decent explosives skill to get the collars around their necks off. Keep in mind that the lower explosives skill-choice will kill the captives, so it's best that you either opt to use the higher explosives option, which will set the captives free, or better yet, use the key from the guard in the small, rectangular building adjacent to the gated area, which, once handed over to the captives, will allow them to free themselves and scamper off back to their homes.

Speaking of homes, these captives did come from somewhere... and that somewhere is the Aerotech Office Park, which is located just to the south of New Vegas itself, near the NCR Sharecropper Farm and some other locations. There, you'll find a man in a tent named Frank Weathers. The Weathers name will sound familiar to you because it's the name shared by some of the captives you just freed. If you're seeking out more of a reward from completing this basic side quest other than the experience points for freeing the prisoners, you may want to visit Frank first, speaking with him about his family, and then going to rescue his family. Otherwise, there will be no monetary reward, because if you go about it the way we did and speak with him afterwards, he won't even engage you in conversation, nonetheless thank you for freeing his family and cough up some Bottle Caps as a result.